Blast From The Past
by Jump.With.Jess
Summary: Another installment in this series, fallowing It's Crazy. Why does Helen dislike Stephanie so much? Read on and find out. Once again I suck at summary's, sorry.


**~I own nothing, I just like to play in the sandbox.~ **  
**~Any errors are mine.~**  
**I have a little rant if you wouldn't mind? If you don't like my story's than don't read them, do NOT send me PMs saying that you hate the way I write and how I portrayed Frank Plum.  
I have been in an abusive home and trust me it is BOTH parents fault.  
You know who you are troll so please, don't read if you are just going to mindlessly hate and not add in any constructive criticism.  
Thanks and that's the end, happy reading people! Also to margaret aka whymelucylu thank you for being my biggest cheerleader!**

I gasped as the edge of the hot roast pan touched my exposed skin. Slamming the oven door closed, I blew on the skin of my wrist. Gently peeling the foil away from the roast I peeked under. **'Perfect.'** Frank wasn't due home for another half hour and I could do with a light tipple.

Retrieving my private bottle of wine from the back of the pantry, I sat down and pored myself a neat glass. It was rare for neighbors to stop by during the day anymore so it didn't really matter when I started drinking.

Besides everyone eats dinner at 6...except for Milly Bruno, but she's half Irish and doesn't count anyway.

If she were honest with herself she would admit that problems with the neighbors had started when they had disowned _her. _Honestly even Valerie had stopped seeing reason and had eventually sided with that abomination.

But no...mustn't think about any of them, Frank had told her they were above them and she stood behind her husband. And that's where a wife belonged, _behind _her husband. Not beside him in the workplace as _Stephanie_ thought her place was. She had even heard over the garden fence that Valerie was going to community college.

Where had she gone wrong? Thinking back to the beginning of her marriage, she barely noticed her practiced movements around the kitchen as she finished dinner.

When she met Frank he was preparing to leave for Vietnam and was on leave. He was a friend of a cousin and came from the Burg. He had come with said friend and cousin to a family barbeque, she could still picture it in her mind. He in his military uniform, she in her best summer dress. He had left her that night with a kiss on the cheek and not even a promise. But she waited and he sent her a few letters and when he had come home, injured from enemy fire, they married.

She hadn't realized how different he was from that barbeque until the first time he woke her in the night screaming. Things hadn't gotten much better after that, it was only when her uncle had offered him a place at the locale post office that they lessened some.

On the nights when they were just as bad as when he had first come home she found herself grateful that they had separate beds and he never stayed in hers after he had his rights. The chasm between there beds had grown over the years and as of late she had caught him eyeing mothers old room.

After she had become pregnant she thought everything would be better. For though's nine short months, life was perfect. Frank stopped visiting her bed in the dark of night and had become a more attentive husband during the day when he wasn't at work or with friends.

But then the boy they had hoped so hard for and that she had prayed to the Lord above for at every Mass turned out to be a girl. Frank had become more distant even as her friends told her it wouldn't last, she just had to make sure she didn't get fat and that she got pregnant again quickly. So as soon as Valerie was weaned I took myself over to Bella Morelli's house and asked for something to make sure I would have a boy. All the girls in the neighborhood knew to go to her with there problems. Whether you were a dirty girl who had missed her moon or one who wanted to make a sweetheart fall in love with you, she was the women you went to.

I remember knocking on her door and it opening, even covered in bruises from her husband she still had an ethereal beauty to her. She had taken one look at me and turned around, leaving the door wide open behind her. She was from the old country and for whatever reason hadn't learned much English yet. Some would say it was from stupidity but one look into her eyes and you could tell it was anything but.

She had given me a foul smelling bag and told me in broken words to make it up in a big soup pot and drink a cup a day until I was with child. So that's what I did, and a month later I was pregnant with baby number two. I hadn't been doing anything special the day I lost him, just puttering around the kitchen as I was now, Valerie cooing gently in the background. The pains had come on fast and sharp and sharp, the last thing I saw before I fainted was a large puddle of blood. When I came to I was in a sterile white room, strapped down to an itchy bed. My stomach as flat as it had been before I was pregnant. At my cry's the nurse had rushed in, one of the _career _girls from the Burg. She hadn't run in my set but we were still friendly.

She was saying word that I couldn't understand, she had left soon after. The doctor came in next but what he was saying didn't make any sense either. My baby was gone? He had also left, when he came back it was with Frank. He stood at the bottom of my bed and explained in cold tones how I had failed, I had lost our baby. A boy. He had turned and left and I hadn't seen him again until two days later when he had brought me home. My mother had met me at our door with Valerie and handed her to me with pitying eyes, at my behest she had left minutes later.

The quite permeated in our home until I had healed. After that Frank was on me every night, intent on getting me with another child. As quickly as his nightly visits had started they ended with the same fever. I was much more careful this time, mother came and helped take care of things while I rested in bed or on our overstuffed love seat.

A month before I was due the pains started again, slower this time but with no shortage of blood. I had gotten to the hospital much quicker this time and had managed to have a healthy baby. It was days and days later before my fever had passed and I was in possession of all of my faculties. When they had first handed it to me it was so big that I thought it _must _be a boy, but then they had asked what I wanted to name _her._

I had felt such hatred for her that I handed her back for fear I would do her harm. I hadn't wanted to see her for the rest of the day, even to feed her. Especially once I found out that they had given her to me as a sort of conciliation prize. That thing that had been in me for eight months, had stolen my chance of ever having another baby.

We settled back in to home life, the four of us. Wake up at 5:30 and feed it and Valerie. Make breakfast for Frank and I, exchange minimal pleasantries over breakfast, say goodby. Do the daily chores around the house, talk to the neighbor lady's. Make sure Valerie and it were fed and clean during the day, make dinner, wait for Frank to come home. Serve dinner, exchange minimal pleasantries, watch Frank watch TV. Wait until he was in bed, do a quick clean, go to bed and do it all again. Day after day, after day. Things got better in some ways when Frank had women on the side in some ways, worse in others. I watched over the years as my perfect little girl turned into a perfect picture of a Burg Lady while _Stephanie _was crass and ugly and always wanting to be different.

I thought for a short time that she might redeem herself when she got married but she refused to do what a proper wife should do and turn her cheek to her husband's affair. Sometimes I caught Frank staring at me over the years, his eyes screaming at me that this shame was mine, I had born her into this world. I had taken up tippling when _she _had taken to thinking she could fly and had jumped off the roof of 's garage and right into the poor women's prize rose bush.

Her marriage had it's up's and downs, her mother coming to live with them in most ways was a definite down but that's what you do when your parents get old. Even if her mother just reminded her a little to much of _Stephanie. _It really was Stephanie's fault her life had fallen so far short of what it could have been. I had dreamed of a matched set of babies, a boy and girl and had instead gotten that _thing._

I was pulled from my musings as I heard Franks cab pull in, standing up I finished setting the table.


End file.
